I Still See Signs of Her

I shun the world around me
and remain locked away
in this cold space within,
haunted by a ghost
of a little girl
whose garden
was left to die.

Darker scenes unfold
and time passes by,
but she has never left —
all this time
she was waiting
for me to join her,
to believe in her,
to plant her words once again
and to let them bloom
endlessly.

But I’ve failed her,
time and time again,
I have let her down.

So here she is
in the corner of my heart,
seeing the flicker of warmth
as eternal cold,
the sky out there
as four dusty walls,
the grandest of dreams
as inevitable tragedies,
and her garden
as words that have
never mattered at all.

I hear her cries
in the middle of the night,
but I am too tired
to tell her that
I am still not alright.

I see her forlorn eyes
growing colder with time,
but I am too afraid
to confess that I, too,
have died inside.

Somewhere deep inside,
she understands
that I have to move on
and leave her like this,
in a constant state of purgatory,
with so much to know
yet so little to believe in.

But even when
I walk alone,
I still see her gaze
in every bird’s eyes,
I still hear her cries
in every storm,
I still feel her cold touch
in every breeze
that passes me by —
I still see signs of her
when I am looking
towards the sky.

All this time
she was waiting for me
to learn how to fly,
to reach those heavenly echoes
that once spoke to her
through poets of old,
to revive what once
was abandoned,
buried under
the weight of
sunken memories.

All this time
she was waiting for me
to see the reflection of heaven
through her tears,
to water the garden
and find my roots again,
to hold onto
the precious and rare
as if no other treasure
in the world could
ever compare to it.

All this time
she saw the life in me —
for it was I
who kept her alive
all this time.

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This poem was previously accepted by and published on Loose Words, a publication on Medium.

I am making some poems available here on my personal site so that anybody can read them without the paywall.